Fan TV joins competition for living room control

Add another entry into the battle for control of your living room: Fan TV.

The Silicon Valley tech company Fanhattan plans to bring to market a TV app driven by a small set-top box and sexy, sleek remote control that makes it easier to manage your entertainment options.

Fan TV, due later this year, would offer an easy-to-search interface that would include all programming available on your pay TV service and Net video providers such as Amazon.com, Hulu and Netflix. Your DVR would be replace by a cloud-based content locker.

"It is challenging for consumers to feel they are in control of their entertainment," says Fanhattan CEO Gilles BianRosa. "We are trying to bring the magic back to the discovery process."

Famed designer Yves Behar assisted the San Mateo, Calif., company in the design of the soap bar-shaped button-less remote control and the small settop device with HDMI connection and built-in WiFi.

Fanhattan hopes to partner with pay TV services and the nearly 30 online providers that it currently supports on its Fanhattan app for iPads and other Apple devices.

Companies looking to gain control of your living room continues to grow. Microsoft wants consumers to connect their pay TV services through the new Xbox One video game system, announced last week and due later this year. With the system's Kinect controller, users will be able to control programming with voice and hand gestures.

Earlier this week, cable giant Comcast added voice control to the iPhone app for perusing its Xfinity On Demand service. Also this week, satellite TV provider DISH Network released a new Social app, providing Facebook and Twitter features to customers with its Hopper DVR.

Others in the ring include Google, Apple and smart TV makers such as LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp and Sony.

Competition will continue to heighten in a pay TV market that is expected to rise from $78.6 billion, as estimated by PricewaterhouseCoopers, in the U.S. in 2013 to about $93 billion in 2016.

It's inevitable that the traditional pay TV providers will continue to lose control over the user interface, says Joel Espelien of tech research firm The Diffusion Group. "TV is a huge market that is going through a huge long term transition from linear broadcast to a mixture of linear broadcast and broadband streaming," he says. "This is going to many more years to play out, and there should be room for multiple ecosystems to compete."

Fan TV's approach of organizing a "wall of apps" could provide "a better experience for the user," says Brian Blau of research firm Gartner.

The remote control, which users learn to intuitively swipe and tap, "is a fascinating device," Blau says. "It's really easy to use, simple to understand, and really unique in terms of what we think about in terms of remote controls."

If a major cable TV company teams up with Fan TV, that represents a new strategy in the competition, Blau says. All-in-one solutions such as those presented by Microsoft that includes video games, "could be trouble for Fan," he says. But for those who focus on TV, Fan TV "will be a perfect solution."